Cozy french country cottage in Burgundy

Bonjour everyone, I'm Marloes, a Dutch business owner, and I moved to Burgundy in France in 2019 with my family. And on my channel I share our slow and simple life here in the French countryside. I talk about brocante, cooking, beautiful places to visit in our region and other parts of France, and every now and then I do a home tour in which I take you to a gorgeous French house and I'm happy to share another one of those beautiful houses with you in this video. Huh? Very. Holy cow. Welcome to the cozy little cottage in the hills of Burgundy that my friends Kate and Nathan, originally from Australia, bought off the internet unseen about three years ago. Then the pandemic hit and they weren't able to come see the house they had just bought in real life. They had to wait for two years before they could fly to France and discover what it actually was that they bought. Fortunately, when they saw the house in real life it was perfect. It was everything that they had hoped for. And they've spent the past 18 months during their many visits to France on turning this cottage into their dream cottage, painting the walls, doing all kinds of renovation works, and decorating the house with their many, many gorgeous finds that they find in the many videos that they visit. And I believe Kate has such a good eye for finding the most beautiful items and especially combining them in their home. And because Nathan is a chef, their entire home is centered around the kitchen so you could not make me any happier than filming a house like this. And I'm happy to take you with me on a little tour. Did you give it a name? Bambi. Bambi? Bambi. Bambi, oh sure, yeah, makes sense. Talking about the Fête du Couchon. So that was with the whole village celebrating the pig? The pig. There's bowling games, there's games for kids, there's DJ, band, lots of good food, music. There were 240 people. Wow, it was so much fun. It was so much fun. I've never danced so much in my life. Nathan, would you like a coffee? No, I'm okay. You sure? Thank you. What I love about this cottage is that it's so authentic. It's an all en pierre, so made of stone cottage. They simply plastered the walls. You still see the detailing around the door and it has the original doors and windows that probably need to be replaced at some point but they are so gorgeous. And it has the original tiles on the floor, the tomates, that you've heard me speak about more often. And I just think that this gives this cottage that really French cottage core touch that is hard to replicate. Kate and I both adore French dishware. So you can see she's built quite the collection in such a short time. They planted the first bush last year and it's still really, really nice. You are a professional chef. Oh, yes. Which I've had the pleasure of confirming to be true. Yeah, it was really exciting. When we had the house originally there was kind of this kitchen but we like more of an open style so everyone comes and sees that we have two kitchens. That seems to be an Australian thing. Yeah, like you do have kind of a butler's pantry or so but this is laundry, boot room, pantry. But yeah, the best part was always wanting a la conche and finding one second hand and then with your help a very good friend coming and bringing her back to life as he said, you know. Yes, but we're so, so happy and yeah. She gets used to life. Yeah, it's where we spend a lot of time right around here and here. The previous people had this set up as, did you say, the living room, the couch and the fire. But we kind of feel like we live around the dining room table. We play games, we eat, we sit in the middle of the rooms. We like that. Yeah, it's worked for us. Yeah, it makes sense when you like cooking to centre everything around the kitchen and food. We like the couch and it's really comfortable. We just rarely, rarely sit on it. It is very, very comfy. Well, and you're always outside of course. Yes, we tend to live outside also. We sit outside every night till it's dark. My friend here gave it to me. It's her friend. I think I, look at this. It makes you want to go to start collecting scallop and oyster plates. Yeah, stuff you don't need. No, no, but then it's got, in each one there's a theme and there's a recipe for the theme. Look at these table settings. It is spectacular and it's all brocante. Look at that. Oh, that looks like a table that could have been yours. My obsession with green, yes. I mean, we want, when we come here, we want to be part of their culture and we want to experience that. It's really special to be part of a village and we're part of a village WhatsApp group. So, you know, if something's going on, someone's like, the hardware store, will you pick up this? So, we often, on a Sunday, bring things back for the restaurant because it's like, oh, I'm out of lettuce, can you pick up a couple? And then anything we need, we put on the WhatsApp group and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, here's, I've got a plumber, I'll come right now. Or we're going to get a trailer and everyone in the village is going to put money in on a trailer and we can all use this trailer in the village. So, like, it's really cool. So, you've really found a very welcoming and warm community in your village. And I think it's, I don't know if it's unique. I think we've been very open to it, but I do think we, the village that we're in, there's a lot of people that didn't grow up in this village and have moved here and created this kind of culture. Friendship and support. Yeah. And it's, it's been really lovely. And we've been to nearly everyone's house in the village for dinner and we've had everyone here for dinner. We had, I think, 16 for dinner for the village at Christmas time. And yeah, it's fun. It's really wonderful. So, you find it not extremely difficult to build a life here when you're not French? Because you didn't spoke, you didn't speak French. We didn't, no. Just a, just a little bit. Chef's French. I think it helps being a chef, though, when you're coming to Burgundy. You say, ah, I'm a chef. Okay. We love you. Come cook for us. You throw a dinner party and you cook the dinner that you cooked. Everyone wanted to be our friend after that. There are English-speaking people in the village and they've been really helpful. Occasionally they say, okay, enough English. We're only going to speak French. But I think it's not necessary to speak French, but if you want to make really good friends, it really helps. Yeah. Yeah. We've spent six months of the year here and six months in Australia, so we kind of realised it doesn't really matter where we live for our business and what we do, but we just, we like the lifestyle here. It's simple. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's friendly. We have gorgeous friends here, so we've made a life here as well. Come see the bathroom. I don't think much has changed since last time. Yeah, you put in the doors. You have the glass shower screen. So this is where the guests can stay. A lot of people have stayed already and say it's very comfortable. So we're happy here. I've stayed here. And I bought the same pillow. It's so cozy. And Bob and Sue were in here. I just flipped them around. Oh, yeah. And you walked in before the Persian rug. Dutch stairs. It's Ikea. Is it? I feel like $5 at Ikea. That's nice in the background. That's our bedroom. But if you have that view of the forest, it might have been. Oh, it's the sunrise in the morning. Yeah. It streams in. That'd be nice. And that's also really nice. Nice view, but we need new windows. We need doors there. Desk. It's a bit big. Nathan can't get his legs under the desk. So thank you. I haven't done a reveal on the bathroom yet, though. Oh, I love it. It makes such a difference. Such a luxury. Yeah, the apples do. Poopy. Hi. Where's your mate? There she is on the other side of the fence. Oh, my goodness. Oh, there's Poopy. Hi. Look at Poopy. Look. We're running. Oh, we have to get them something, baby. Just straight through the electric fence. Oh, somebody's excited to see us. Hello. 20. Look how little Poopy's 20. And Maine is one. Hi. We're coming. What do you have in your hair? They're so cute. Oh, you're flying, baby. Fly. Nathan's getting a treat. Hang on. Yeah. I should put the footage in from when we were putting that in. And the difference now. Yeah. A vegetable garden. Good. So none of this was here, I don't think, when he left. You and I did the compost bin. Well, we put the compost bin up. That's had an upgrade. Yeah, yeah. And then we made some more. I need to harvest some tomatoes. Yep. They're doing really good. We put them in our greenhouse. There's a turnip coming on. Crazy. I saw it. I think it's hiding. No, it's big. Cucumber? Yeah. You have to be creative with what you've got, right? We have lots of scraps. I don't think we'll be here to enjoy that. No, I don't think it gets much bigger. I think it stays traperty. And courgette, they always do so well. We had peaches for the first time this year. No, but it's because the issue with the peaches is that when there's frost in the early spring, I'm always weeding, always. I know, I know. It's fighting a losing battle, I think. I know, and you, yeah. But it's when it freezes like early April, then all the blossom dies, and then you don't get any peaches. And then we didn't have frost this year for the first time. And we had like three kilos or something. And we have a small, a small one. So we made lots of confiture. They're talking. They're having a whole conversation. Ah, the farmer's coming. We probably need to come back in a couple of years time, because Kate and Nathan have decided to take on the courageous project of renovating the 500 years old barn that was about to fall apart. That's on their plot. So that was 300 years old, you were told. 500? Really? And a sheep farm for you to make. This was level? Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. I think our land goes up to the edge. Yeah, so now they have access. But you get a feel. It's supposed to be done by November. And then done means having the roof on? Insulated roof. Exactly. It's nice to have a project and take time to do it. So much mint. If you want to see what their house looked like when they first viewed it and started their first works, I highly encourage you to go visit their YouTube channel. It has a few videos, but the first, the oldest video, is of their first actual real-life visit of the house and the first works they did to turn it into the gorgeous place that it is today. So I'll include a link in the description box so you can have a look. Thank you again so much for watching and please let me know what you loved most about this cozy little cottage. And then I will see you in the next one.